Re: gui design of nm-applet

[Dan Williams <dcbw redhat com>]

On Mon, 2010-03-08 at 13:24 +0100, van Schelve wrote:
> We are planning to rollout NM > 0.8 to a very! big number of mobile Linux
> systems. Our different usecases for NM are Ethernet, 3G datacards,
> bluetooth based 3g and in small numbers wlan as well.
> 
> Today we had a discussion about nm-applet in our companay. We are worried
> about our user get overcharge with the usability of nm-applet. The biggest
> painpoint we talked about in this context is way nm presents the available
> devices, available connections and the active connections.
> 
> The horizontal separator should be removed from nm-applet. It looks like a
> logical separator between different connection types.

Hmm, the indentation was supposed to help make that clearer.  The
problem is that we do need a mechanism to distinguish between the
"current" network connection for that device and it's associated actions
(like disconnect) and the other available connections.  Unfortunately
we're currently stuck in a GtkMenu widget where we can't control the
layout in a fine-grained manner without violating a lot of UI principles
(since it is still a menu).

> Maybe it could be a way using differnt font size / weight? Or maybe
> indenting blockwise?

It might work to make the "available" text in the line smaller perhaps
to differentiate it more from the surrounding text?

> Are there currently any plans to polish the nm-applet?

Mainly plans to stop using a GtkMenu widget entirely and move to a more
freeform widget.  That's not in-progress yet though.  Until then we can
certainly discuss ways to make the current menu-based approach better,
especially if we find that users are confused with it.  We should have a
lot better data on the new applet too given that both Ubuntu 9.10 and
Fedora 12 shipped with it.

Dan